


home is where you’re loved

by greyedscale



Series: ushiten week 2020 [5]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Autistic Tendou Satori, Autistic Ushijima Wakatoshi, Getting Together, Home, M/M, Neglect, Pre-Relationship, Reflection, Tendou Satori Has Self-Esteem Issues, Tendou Satori Is Bad at Feelings, Ushijima Wakatoshi is Bad at Feelings, effects of past bullying, no beta we die like kyoutani’s first spike
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26160379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyedscale/pseuds/greyedscale
Summary: “Wakatoshi?” Satori pulls the taller boy to a corner away from the rest of the team. Instinctively, he knows this is not a conversation Wakatoshi would want to have so publicly in front of everyone. “I think you gave me a trick question.”Wakatoshi just gives him a look that conveys for him to elaborate.“Home and love? I think they’re the same thing. You can’t have a home without a love because home is where you’re loved.”Wakatoshi and Satori, two people with complicated understandings of home find a home with each other.
Relationships: Tendou Satori/Ushijima Wakatoshi
Series: ushiten week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1893910
Comments: 7
Kudos: 118
Collections: Ushiten Week 2020





	home is where you’re loved

Home is not a word easily understood for Ushijima Wakatoshi. Sure, he understands it in terms of what a dictionary would define it as, but understanding the feeling? That is not something Wakatoshi knows.

He’s heard it’s supposed to be a warm and fuzzy feeling–on the same level as crushes and friendship. Having had neither growing up, Wakatoshi is unsure what that means. In fact, Wakatoshi has trouble identifying most feelings except for disappointment and enthusiasm, and, even then, he is only able to identify these two because of their connection to volleyball in his mind. It’s been his one enduring interest, and the only thing that has never been confusing in his mind. Just as he knows his name is Ushijima, he knows he will become an ace that can always be relied upon.

So, Ushijima isn’t one for softer emotions, not when he’s devoted his whole being to volleyball. But, if he absolutely had to, and he had the time to sit down and reflect for a few hours or maybe days, he would say that as a child, he might have felt lonely.

His father wasn’t allowed too much contact with him by the Ushijima Family. They even went so far as to get him a job abroad to minimize contact between their heir and someone who married in yet was already cast out of the family.

So, Wakatoshi grew up in a place dominated by rules and lectures, strictness and discipline. It wasn’t that his grandmother and mother did not care about him; on the contrary, they cared very much about his success and reputation. However, they never quite understood him–and his volleyball obsession–the way his father did. They cared that he was healthy and that he excelled at his classes. They cared that he brought _fame_ and _acclaim_ to the noble name of Ushijima.

So, it could be more accurate to say, that they didn’t care for Wakatoshi specifically, but rather the Heir and Future of the Ushijima Name.

Wakatoshi is sure this factors into his non-understanding of what a home is, but he’s not exactly sure how. It probably has something to do with how he grew up yearning for warmth yet knowing only the cold.

* * *

Home is not a word easily understood for Tendou Satori. Satori thinks that he was born wrong, but no one’s ever confirmed it for him in the way he would accept. It starts with his parents, who found his too wide eyes and too quiet countenance to be so utterly strange. Perhaps, that is why they name him after a monster of old, a youkai: the satori.

It only grew as he got older. The children from the neighborhood took to calling Satori a youkai as well. Children weren’t very creative like that. They took everything they heard from their parents and adults and spun it back at each other; it just so happened that what the adults had to say about Satori weren’t very good.

Satori remembers what it felt like finding volleyball for the first time. It felt like the slow-moving world he had only ever destined to observe–rather than participate in–was suddenly rushing around, full of color. It was a bright spot and the one activity he clung to so he could brush off every stinging comment made against him; it was a paradise.

 _“Youkai aren’t allowed on human teams!”_  
It wasn’t until Satori had heard these words that his reality had crashed back on him. He may have discovered a new, wonderous blocking style that day, but even that wasn’t enough to stave off the cold seeping back into him. Volleyball was no longer a paradise. At least, not for Tendou Satori it wasn’t.

A week later, his parent had had enough of him and shipped him off to his aunt’s house, hoping a new location would allow him to shed the weirdness that clung to him like a bad omen. It wasn’t that the new location couldn’t be called a home, but with his aunt only talking to him when needed, and him not really knowing how to react to her…well, it was another failed attempt at finding Satori a home to fit into.

Three months later, he was shipped off to another distant relative, this time an overworked careerwoman who was often too frazzled and too overworked to even remember he had bee settled down in her home. Three weeks into this new dwelling, Satori remembers her asking him for his name and reason for being there. He left the next day of his own volition, went to a nearby twenty-four-hour gym and sat in the locker rooms until he had finally contacted another relative that was willing to ‘give him a shot.’ It seemed more like they wanted to brag about being able to ‘tame the youkai’ than actually take care of him, but Satori figured it’d be better staying there than with someone who hadn’t even remembered taking him in.

It was lonely experience.

* * *

Shiratorizawa is both everything Wakatoshi expected and nothing like what he thought it’d be like. It’s both comforting in its complete acceptance of his single-minded drive for volleyball and rather strange for the same reason. Wakatoshi doesn’t really know what to make of it, and maybe, that is what, ~~scares~~ puzzles him the most.

However, the dorm system meant that he was able to find a respite from the cold he had barely noticed up until this point. Holidays become a little colder, but half-way into his second year, Wakatoshi realizes he has been feeling warm for a while. And he’s had a new definition of home for the same amount of time.

* * *

Satori thinks it’s sad that the most at home he’s eve felt has been at his school’s dorm–a place designed to be a temporary home at best and essentially a cage at worst. But Shiratorizawa lets him play volleyball that makes him feel good–encourages it even!

If this is what a home feels like, then home really was a paradise on earth.

* * *

There’s a part missing to their conception of ‘home’ that neither Wakatoshi nor Satori realize until they find it. Three days into their second training camp at Shiratorizawa, Wakatoshi is the first to realize what it is.

“Satori,” his voice rumbles, “What is the meaning of love?”

Satori opens his mouth to give a textbook definition before he’s stopped by the look in Wakatoshi’s eyes. It’s slight, and most would not recognize it, but there’s something there that tells Satori their ace is serious and will not take a joke for an answer. The red-head sighs, tilting his head as he thinks on an actual answer for the left-handed player. Satori is aware of his own tendency to use jokes to distance himself, which just means that reflecting hard on the true nature of things is _hard_ in front of others.

“What brought this on, Wakatoshi-kun,” he asks instead when he’s too nervous to come up with a proper answer.

The green-haired ace answers with yet another question, “Is a home complete without love?”

“Wakatoshi-kun, you asked the wrong person,” Satori drawls, “I barely know what a home is.”

“But, even so, you _at least_ know what a home is,” the stoic ace counters.

Satori hums as he considers that. “Let me get back to you on that.”

Wakatoshi nods his assent, and that’s the end of that for the time being.

* * *

Satori doesn’t really give Wakatoshi a proper answer until after their second National Spring Interhigh Tournament.

“Wakatoshi?” Satori pulls the taller boy to a corner away from the rest of the team. Instinctively, he knows this is not a conversation Wakatoshi would want to have so publicly in front of everyone. “I think you gave me a trick question.”

Wakatoshi just gives him a look that conveys for him to elaborate.

“Home and love? I think they’re the same thing. You can’t have a home without a love because home is where you’re loved.”

“Ah,” the ace responds.

And Satori is left scrambling, feeling strangely exposed for having such an emotionally charged conversation in the vicinity of so many people and not the comfort of an empty locker room like last time.

“Then, Satori,” Wakatoshi continues to the red-head’s surprise, “I think my home is with you.”

“Huh,” a dazed Satori responds, “I’m in love with you too, Wakatoshi-kun.”

And just like that, things slid into place, and the two soon to be third years walk to the buses with their hands brushing every once in a while.

Neither of them really knew what home meant growing up, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t discovered it with each other.

**Author's Note:**

>  **[note]** come scream with my friends and i: [ https://discord.gg/GTNHyNr](https://discord.gg/GTNHyNr)  
> (although the server is mainly for the bnha fandom)


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